Anti-Gore Hate Mail Campaign Too Obvious to Be Believed
If you're looking for evidence of the gathering campaign to game the public conversation about climate change, check out this CNN post of Al Gore's presentation to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Scroll to the bottom of the story and you will see that in less than two hours from the time of posting, the story attracted more than 150 comments, nearly all of them hysterical, bitchy, vitriolic sneers or classic denier talking points.
In a country that just elected President Barack Obama, this is not a representative sample - and I don't believe for a minute that this is accidental. It would be interesting if CNN could check the IP addresses (or maybe, the IP ADDRESS) on these enthusiastic media consumers. I suspect that would prove this is a fix.
There's a simpler, less sinister explanation: the article was posted on a Denier mailing list or forum and they all poured in to drown the comments with their usual stupidity.
The fact that the Deniers are now becoming irrelevant to the conversation, given the new scientifically literate president, means that they're just shrieking louder. Death throes, hopefully.
COORDINATED LOCAL ACTIVISM!!!!!!!!!!! WOOHOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
No clue on whether the black helicopters were used in this particular case, though.
-- bi
The Deniers is a new user group on the internet of our days. Looks like thier logic was broken in their childhood. Or maybe they are children?
-- my edu project: whats my ip address
That's rather paranoid Richard. Why in the world would posts be a representative sample?
Read articles at the Huffington Post or Andrew Revkin's Dot Earth blog and you will find the precise opposite: nearly every post is supportive of AGW. However, nobody claims anything nefarious in those instances.
Read articles at the Huffington Post or Andrew Revkin's Dot Earth blog and you will find the precise opposite:
This is false.
The "They did it too!" defence is wearing thin.
-- bi
Your response is incoherent Frank.
I questioned why Richard would assume any site on the internet would be "representative". Lord knows, the Huffington Post isn't. There is, however, nothing dark or sinister about this.
Well, well, well, I see that you're trying to backpedal away from your suggestion that commenters on HuffPo are left-biased, and slowly move towards the weaker claim that the authors on HuffPo are left-biased.
Then again, it's an inactivist tenet -- "Clinton did it too!" -- that any bogus actions on their part are more than 'balanced' by some climate activist's action which is even remotely similar in some remotely remote way.
-- bi
On a CNN story, I would have expected the comments to lean the other way if anything.
I don't know why you would assume that.
If the Gore article had appear on the Drudge Report or Fox News (fat chance, but stay with me a moment), I would not have been surprised by an overwhelmingly ideological response. But by the current standard of U.S. mass media, CNN is somewere near the middle, so I would expect a representative sample of their readers.
The size and speed of this response - and the consistency or tone and messaging in the content - suggests something fairly well organized ... and therefore entirely disingenuous.
Though, as I said this morning to Ross Gelbspan, the deep, abiding hatred of Gore expressed in this outburst is a backhanded compliment to how effective he has been in forcing the public to look at this issue.
"The size and speed of this response - and the consistency or tone and messaging in the content - suggests something fairly well organized ... and therefore entirely disingenuous."
Why? That is a circular arguement where the only "evidence" are your unfounded assumptions Richard. It doesn't sound like you've been following other websites and their comments on AGW for long.
Shorter paul s:
'My argument was debunked right above, so I'll simply ignore that and repeat my claim.'
-- bi
that he gets paid by the # of posts, regardless of the content, so he justs stills with the same note -- over, and over, and over . . .
All done in an 1 1/2 hours, just about a continuous feed of negative stuff, then the comments were closed. The ratio of negative/positive AGW way different from normal. Had to have been coordinated.
The general public does not have the standard denier cant (Mars warming, climate always changing, solar variation, etc.) at the top of its head. The people who tell me personally "I don't believe in global warming" either have no reason, or make up a different one than given by the professional denier community.
I've been convinced a lot of posts against AGW originate from paid sources. I've noticed that certain deniers get there first on many blogs, like DotEarth. This demonstration is the most convincing. If CNN doesn't check IP's addresses it should.
I'm just surprised anyone would go to the trouble of coordinating a response like that. I mean who is even going to read all those comments. I read about 10 of them. I figure that when comment threads go on that long, they are pretty much unread. Especially when they all say the same thing.
I'm just surprised anyone would go to the trouble of coordinating a response like that.
Well, if paul s would go to the trouble of spamming the same talking point incessantly by himself, then it's not very surprising.
-- bi
That is a shortsighted way to run a media empire. Such blatant tunnel vision will turn away viewers. Advertisers would be smart to seek other media outlets than CNN.